


The Sound of Silence

by Khanofallorcs, MiaBrown



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Anxiety, Communication, Endgame Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Panic Attacks, implied adrigami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28999632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khanofallorcs/pseuds/Khanofallorcs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaBrown/pseuds/MiaBrown
Summary: If anyone would have asked her what music was made of, for most of her life, Marinette would have answered “notes, obviously”. Luka was the one who mentioned that she was omitting “pauses”, when he first showed her how to strum the guitar. She had nodded then, guessing he had a point. But it would take a while for the point to really sink in.
Relationships: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77





	The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiniNoire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniNoire/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Mini!! <3  
> It has been wonderful working and making friends with you this year!  
> We wish you just as awesome a day as you are and hope that you like this piece we came up with based on your "silence" prompt!
> 
> Thank you to [Cass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagansjagger/pseuds/sagansjagger) for beta reading!

If anyone would have asked her what music was made of, for most of her life, Marinette would have answered “notes, obviously”. Luka was the one who mentioned that she was omitting “pauses”, when he first showed her how to strum the guitar. She had nodded then, guessing he had a point. But it would take a while for the point to really sink in. 

That had been a memorable learning experience: she’d gotten so wrapped up in trying to follow the way he strummed the chords and then replicating it in her own clumsy way that she became frustrated when her own notes never formed a song. 

Luka was patient with her, the way he had always been. He showed her again. They’d been shoulder to shoulder so she wouldn’t have to mirror what he was doing when it came to her turn (yeah, he was ambidextrous, but sometimes he got confused trying to explain the reversed version; not that he was good at very technical explanations of how to play to begin with). 

He’d had to remind her to relax at a few points, proving his point by wrapping his stupidly long arm around her waist, all the while his hands had been on their positions on the guitar. Luka moved his right hand over hers, dwarfing it. He made their two hands strum up and down, while his left hand coaxed hers to grasp the neck of the guitar. 

Slowly, she began to pick up the pace over their overlapping hands, making the notes stream from the instrument. The more she played the quicker it had come, and the more absorbed she was in the sounds. Luka noticed that again, she was focused on getting the song done instead of making music.

She’d lost track of his other hand, which had snaked its way down, hovering just off her side. Looking from the corner of his eye to make sure she was lost in her own world, Luka ever so slowly coiled his fingers to attack. And suddenly he snapped, each finger trailing quickly up and down her side, strumming to create the lovely song that was her surprised squeak, followed by her laughter as she tried to fend off his tickling. 

She was much stronger than she looked — Luka put it down to all the sacks of flour she carried in the bakery —, able to push him off with just one hand. All the same, he had the advantage of longer limbs, continuing his relentless assault,not even bothering about if the guitar was safely positioned off to the side. He punished every opening she left, but the window was never larger than a moment before she’d reposition out of his reach.

He’d slowed down when she started firing back, a smirk on her face, making involuntary chortles escape his lips. His hands came to rest on the small of her back, and her arms had been likewise securely wrapped around him. Their breathing, previously in big gasps, came in quiet, synchronized inhales through the nose. His forehead lay against hers. 

In the silence of the room, Marinette could hear the bright beating of his heart, playing a song she had never heard before. She wondered what hers sounded like at that moment. 

That was the day, Marinette had started to realize, a song without pauses is like color without contrast. Pauses are part of the essence, creating a push and pull without which the sounds are just noise; pleasant enough on their own, but ultimately not meaningful.

* * *

“You need to relax, Sweetheart!” Sabine said as she watched her daughter try to brew her third serving of coffee for the day in the kitchen — and forgetting to add water this time. 

“Yes, Marinette, you’re always so busy!” Tom chimed in, swinging a controller in his hand enthusiastically. “We should play some  _ Ultimate Mecha Strike _ , that would surely make you feel better!” 

“I don’t have time to play!” Marinette stated for the umpteenth time, tapping her fingers against the counter. 

It wasn’t just that she didn’t have time to play, she didn’t even have time to have a debate about this. There were the countless midterms she needed to study for, she had a new design to finish for Kitty Section, and that wasn’t even mentioning working on further deciphering the Grimoire or juggling her other newly-found Guardian duties. 

These days Marinette’s head and timetable were the embodiment of chaos, loosely held together by the last threads of her remaining mental health. And the worst part wasn’t even this huge responsibility in itself, or the fact that she had no way to share any of it with anyone. 

No, the worst part was the cacophony. 

The way her thoughts ran loose all day and most of the night, chasing each other around, never giving her a moment’s pause. And the pressure only got worse from the useless, albeit well-meaning, advice her friends and family supplied Marinette with. It was  _ “Listen to this relaxation CD!” _ ,  _ “That podcast gives a very good perspective, you have to try it!” _ ,  _ “Let’s go out, that’s going to cheer you up!” _ all day and while Marinette  _ knew  _ that they were just trying to support her, none of it helped.

They were too much, breathing down her neck with their advice and solutions, but they couldn’t help her, no matter how hard they tried. It was blatantly obvious that a normal teenage girl and the saviour of Paris needed very different kinds of support. The only problem was that Marinette couldn’t get advice for a problem she didn’t — couldn’t — share.

“What about the movies? I’m sure your friends would be thrilled to finally hang out with you, we haven’t seen them in so long!” Sabine enthused, shaking her daughter out of her reverie. 

Marinette just shooed away the idea once more, fumbling for a coffee cup to get back to her activities as soon as she could. As she scaled the stairs to her room, Tom still shouted some encouraging words after her, but Marinette tuned it out. 

Evidently she had communication problems, but how was she supposed to solve that if the only thing she couldn’t do was, well, communicate? It felt unfair that she couldn’t share any of her secrets with her loved ones — not even Chat Noir, whom she didn’t want to burden with her own problems when he finally seemed so genuinely happy with his new girlfriend — but that was just how things had to be. 

If she couldn’t speak to others about her struggles, that quite literally meant the end of discussion. 

Right?

* * *

Freeing up time to spend with Luka should have been easy. Marinette  _ wanted  _ to spend time with him. She wanted to go to all of his rehearsals, wanted to wait for him after school — since as he was in an upper grade, he usually had classes longer — and wanted to try new video games with him, like that one with the androids for whose release Marinette had patiently waited several months for.

But her life just couldn’t be that easy. So, when she finally did get the time to spend with Luka, she had to savour every minute of it. Which would have been that much easier if her brain had shut up for the time being and didn’t bombard her with the tremendous amount of things on her to-do list she currently wasn’t getting done. If only she could catch a break, a moment of pause. 

Marinette squirmed in place as she sat on the banks of the Seine next to Luka and chose not to shove a mouthful of blueberry ice-cream in her mouth so she could break the nerve-wracking silence. 

“Sooo, you know how we had that coffee-stain incident on the photoshoot last month with Juleka? It’s actually a pretty funny story, because I thought I had taken care of that long ago, but it turned out that…” 

And Marinette just went on, talking about nothing in particular while she kept toying with a stray lock of her hair. And Luka just sat there, his eyes on her, listening attentively all along.

“...and that’s why I’m probably going to fail on my history exam next week, and I will be held back because of it, and then I can’t go to university and I’ll have to work at the bakery for the next fifty years.” 

In reality, that wasn’t why she was probably going to fail her test and consecutively work for her parents for the rest of her life, but the real reason always started with “G-” and ended with “-uardian”.

Marientte stopped long enough to take a big, shaky breath. Then she felt Luka’s light touch on her shoulder. When she looked up at him and noticed how his gentle smile was blurry, only then did Marinette realize she was crying. 

“Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Luka asked, without even the trace of the doubt that there  _ was  _ a problem she wasn’t telling him. 

Marinette shook her head — not to deny the evident but to answer his question. “I-I can’t.”

She was prepared for Luka to try to convince her to share anyway — the way Alya had always tried to uncover a new scoop so she could give her friend tips in the knowledge of the full picture. 

She was also prepared for Luka to accept she wasn’t going to share but still try to shove generic advice on her — like her parents tried to do every time they bumped into unexpected walls. 

She was even prepared for Luka to get angry and leave her hanging, fuming and hauling her up for being insincere and keeping secrets. 

The thing Marinette wasn’t prepared for was for the boy’s long arms to circle her and pull her small, shaking frame in for a secure embrace. Luka held her close, resting his chin on the top of her head, all the while massaging soothing circles on her back.

“That’s alright. You don’t need to tell me,” he said, pressing a light kiss on her crown. “Words are nice but I don’t need them to know when you need me.”

They sat there long enough to witness the abandoned ice creams melt into a puddle of blue liquid; but, for once, Marinette didn’t mind. She didn’t mind listening to only the whistling of the wind and their slowly synchronizing breaths, didn’t mind “doing nothing” but sitting there and hugging Luka. 

For a long time, Marinette only knew what she didn't need from people, but on the banks of the Seine on that sunny afternoon, this solemn moment finally felt like what she had been searching for. 

It felt like the break, to momentary pause she hadn’t known she needed.

It felt like clarity.

* * *

Every now and then, Marinette and Luka would meditate together. Perhaps not the most common couples activity, but they both needed it, even if for different reasons. 

She found that meditation controlled her anxiety and quieted down the noise enough that she could focus on the parts that mattered.

He needed to meditate to clear his mind to be able to fully live in the present. Marinette had learned that if he didn’t pause, he was at danger of getting too deep into his head, lost in the rush of all the responsibilities that came with being the most responsible member of his family.

Marinette found that the houseboat was a different kind of peaceful — at least when Anarka wasn’t holding an impromptu concert — compared to the bakery, at least, as far as meditating was concerned. 

She had grown up used to the distant hum of ovens, the slapping of dough against the countertop, and the faint crackling of crust — she had learned to separate the quality of baguettes by sound alone. Depending on the hour, there would be greetings from patrons and the bell letting everyone know that someone new had entered. 

On the Liberty, she could hear the wind, and the gentle lapping of waves — Anarka had regaled her with stories of how, at sea, both of those grew wilder. Sometimes she could make out a distant rumble of a car engine, the shrill cry of a seagull, or Rose and Juleka’s whispers in another room whenever the former came to visit.

But all that noise made the silence when the cacophony faded away all the louder.

Normally, when Marinette meditated with her mother, they stayed back to back. But she and Luka always faced each other. Somehow, his presence made stepping away from everything easier. She took one last look at him before closing her eyes. 

In her mind’s eye she saw the outline of his body fade into a swirling blur of teal. When she breathed in, she picked out his scent: traces of citrus, spice, and something woody she could never pinpoint as anything other than him. Comforting, the way his presence always was. His own breath and heartbeat, regular like a metronome, punctuated the near silence. 

Bit by bit, she pushed away the sensations: color became a mirage, became colorless darkness; the scent faded to nostalgia, then the absence of memory; and the steady push, release, and pause that might have lulled her to sleep grew muffled until only clarity remained. She was alone in the emptiness of her mind. She became aware of her thoughts and anxieties, unseen but roiling around her, their buzz creating white noise and tension. Gently, one by one, she plucked them like a string, letting each reverberate then vanish into soothing nothing. When the orchestra of her thoughts finally stopped, all that remained was serenity and lucidity. 

She slowly opened her eyes, taking in Luka’s form, still deep in meditation. She could barely hear his breath at all now, and if not for the crease of his brow, he could have been a statue. 

She would gladly spend the rest of her life like this, with him.

That sudden realization almost broke her reverie. The thoughts threatened to return, but she took a deep breath and reminded herself: she could order them, one at a time, calmly and at her own pace. 

Her first thought was that this feeling of completeness was new and surprising, but as she let it flow through her, she came to realize that no, it really hadn’t been. She had always felt at ease with Luka, but she had not quite understood how much that meant to her.

The second thought was that this scared her, or it should have scared her. After all, this wasn’t the first time she imagined her life with someone, so the situation brought back unpleasant memories. Marinette had to admit, she’d been wrong before. Now, however, she knew that whatever the case would be, she’d have the chance to discover where their relationship would lead. Worrying about the ifs and maybes wouldn’t help. 

She took a deep breath, reminding herself to be in the moment.

Her third thought was that this would change everything. But then she realized, nothing outside had changed; she just saw something clearly now that had been a truth for a long time.

When Luka finally startled, done with his meditation, Marinette reached her hand out to grab his.

She wondered how much of her realization to share with him. But the warm look in his eyes, the gentle tug on his lip, told her that maybe she didn’t need any words for it at all.

* * *

And when, years later, Luka graced her with the same look, down on one knee, hand outstretched, he didn’t need any words either.


End file.
